Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Streisand: From Funny Girl To Funny Momma

Superstar Barbra Streisand
opened her "Back to Brooklyn" tour with a spectacular concert at the
Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Accompanied by a great orchestra, she
belted out in top form many of her old hits such as "The Way We Were,
which she dedicated to the memory of her frequent collaborator Marvin Hamlisch,
and "The Way He Makes Me Feel" from Ynetl. Her voice and cleavage
were better than many of the stars, who are half her age, that arecurrently touring,

On October 11 and 13, she
returns to perform for the first time in her hometown of Brooklyn at the
Barclays Center for the first time.

We saw anewBarbra on
stage tonight- Funny Girl has matured into Funny Momma. Jason Gould, her son by
actor Elliot Gould, joined her on stage for his public performance as a singer.
She introduced him to her loyal fans with a short movie that he made for her 70th
birthday. It was a beautiful montage of pictures of them together through the
years accompanied by his singing a song that he had written.

A star was born last
night. He is already being compared to Josh Groban. He more than held his own
in a duet of “How Deep Is the Ocean” with his superstar mother. The proud
mother sat on the steps kvelling while her son performed solo.

"I will be right over here if you need me,
but I know you won't," she said as she sat down.

Streisand was joined on
stage by acclaimed trumpeter Chris Botti. She met Botti where all
superstars meet.

Barbra said, “I am not one
to drop addresses. I kept running into Botti at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the
White House.”

Il Volo, the trio of
Italian tenor/studs, are also performing with Barbra. When they exited stage
right to great applause, she joked, "Take that Justin Bieber."

One very intimate part of
the concert was the Ask Barbra segment. Before the concert, fans could stop by
a booth and write down questions for the superstar to answer on stage.

One concertgoer asked what Streisand thought
about Romney eliminating Big Bird? At first, she hesitated.

Babs, a longtime Democrat, said, "I love
Big Bird. I was not going to talk about politics tonight."

Then she could not resist. "I hope Romney
never finds Sesame Street or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," she said.
"How about that debate? Romney sounded like a proper Democrat.”

Streisand ended her
concert with a plea to save the planet. She retold one of her favorite
proverbs- A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will
never sit in. We need to start planning for our children and grandchildren.

She said, "We are a land of lush forests
and blue oceans, but we keep cutting down the trees and polluting the
waters."

Offstage, Barbra has been
campaigning to fight women’s heart disease. Streisand has donated $10 million
to the Cedar-Sinai’s Women’s Heart Center. She has raised more than $10 million
from Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Sumner Redstone, Haim and Cheryl Saban, Mayor Mike
Bloomberg, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, Ricki and Ralph Lauren, and
Ron Perelman for the Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

Former President Clinton,
who has suffered from heart disease, attended a star studded fundraiser at her
Malibu Beach House. Israeli mentalist Lior Suchard, who won a Uri Geller contest,
performed. At that event, Cedars-Sinai announced that they were renaming the
center in her honor.

Streisand explained why
she is fight against women’s heart disease means so much to her. “Why am I here
… because I can’t stand inequality…,” she said. “Whether it is about civil
rights, gay rights, or gender discrimination.
This was long before I made “Ynetl, which is about a women’s struggle in
a man’s world, or the war on women that is being talked about now.

She first learned about
the issue when a close male friend was being treated by Dr. Noel Bairey Merz.
The doctor was able to reverse his heart disease with open heart surgery.

“I like to think that I am
sort of well informed, but I was shocked to learn that heart disease kills more
women than all cancers combined and that more women die annually from heart
disease,” Streisand said.” Last year, in the United States alone, nearly
500,000 women died from it.”

Yet, most of the research
in heart disease is done on men and very little money is allocated to research
specifically on women’s heart disease.

Streisand said, “The only
message that sends is that even in scientific research, women are still treated
as second-class citizens. “That is unacceptable.”